TO LEICESTER AND NOTTINGHAM 133

and resource. And when I say man, I mean not the race but
the male. Women undoubtedly take more kindly to these
monotonous tasks and grey depths of routine, chiefly I
suppose because they expect less from work, have no great
urge to individual enterprise, have more patience with
passivity and tedium, and know that they can live their real
lives either outside the factory or inside their heads. But
nine out of every ten of those girls working at the long rows
of machines only see their factory life as a busy but dreamy
interlude between childhood and marriage. What would
happen if you told them that there were no marriages, no
homes of their own, waiting for them? Do they realise that
the system that enables any number of them to obtain
employment is quietly barring the door against the very
young men towards whom they are already looking as the
future and real wage-earners? For one little piece of know-
ledge it offers me, this journey seems to uncover half a dozen
great pits of ignorance. Already I stare into them in dismay,
then leave them gaping behind me.

The motor bus that took me from Leicester to Nottingham
was not one of those superb coaches that I have already
handsomely praised in this book* It was a most uncom-
fortable vehicle. It shook and rattled. When it reached a
fair speed it struck terror into my heart, like a French
express. At more than forty miles an hour, we seemed to
be swaying on the edge of catastrophe. Even when it was
going slowly, you could not read print inside it, your eyes
being shaken like dice in a box. The back of the seat in
front of mine danced a jig all the way* There were only two
or three of us out of Leicester, but about half-way the bus